(1) Field of the Invention
This invention concerns sub-assemblies, kits including sub-assemblies, and on-site on demand methods for assembling, labeling and programming the sub-assemblies to form electromagnetic devices used in the tagging and tracking of items such as assets, manufactured goods and so forth.
(2) Description of the Art
Most industries today rely on RFID technology to identify, track and authenticate items. Experience has shown that RFID can achieve substantial cost-savings and other operational improvements relative to alternative means of tracking, such as human-readable labels or machine-read barcodes.
In one approach to RFID tag deployment, commonly used when a decoupled RFID tag is not required, the end user creates a tag by printing and simultaneously encoding a label with an embedded RFID label tag and UHF dipole antenna. This approach has the advantage of using standard barcode printers with RFID encoding capabilities and it allows users to easily combine a human-readable label, barcode and an RFID tag on a single label. Such printers have been in use for many years, they are familiar to their users, they are easy to operate at high speeds, and they yield accurate results.
Unfortunately, because of their thickness (generally greater than 5 mm and often greater than 10 mm) decoupled RFID tags cannot be printed on-site because they cannot be fed through and printed on by standard printers. Therefore, the decoupled RFID tag commissioning process requires that each tag be placed upon an RFID reader/programming device, and its chip encoded with required data. A barcode or human-readable label must be separately printed and affixed to the tag. This is time consuming, and requires additional steps and equipment. As a result, the RFID community has substantial interest in improved methods for creating printed-on decoupled RFID tags on an on-demand basis at the point of deployment.